Dem hired guns fight PUDs

As power wars heat up again in the state, a firm of Democratic hired guns has gone to work for Puget Sound Energy in a bid to beat back efforts to create public utility districts in three Western Washington counties.

The utility has put $150,000 into creating “astroturf” citizen groups in Island, Skagit and Jefferson Counties, where initiatives on the ballot would create PUDs to take over electrical service.

The actual campaigns are being run out of the Lake Union offices of a public affairs firm called Strategies 360.

Strategies 360 is headed by Ron Dotzauer, former campaign manager for Sen. Maria Cantwell. Its other Democratic luminaries include ex-Democratic State chairman Paul Berendt, Sen. Patty Murray’s former state director John Engber, and ex-Cantwell press secretary Charla Neuman.

Dotzauer has, in the past two months, hosted high-end fundraisers for Gov. Chris Gregoire and Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash. Dotzauer confirmed that his firm is “doing the campaigns” in the three counties, and added a salient detail. “My wife is a former PUD commissioner (in Snohomish County).”

He argued that the Bonneville Power Administration will not have enough electricity to serve three new PUD’s, which would force the federal agency to cut electricity supplied to existing PUD’s.

“If they’d done this 50 years ago, it would have been different,” Dotzauer added.

Public power has, however, been a cause long identified with Democrats – ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt built Grand Coulee Dam, and established Bonneville as a vehicle to supply low-cost electricity to public utilities and electrical cooperatives around the Pacific Northwest.

“Astroturf” organizing is familiar to residents of Island and Skagit Counties.

The Building Industry Association of Washington has created front groups (all with the same address) in past attempts to unseat state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano.

In the PUD battle, three such groups have been formed: Whidbey Consumers for Affordable Energy, the Skagit Committee for Reliable and Affordable Energy, and Jefferson County Citizens Against Prop. 1.

The same phone number is listed for all three of the groups. The Island and Skagit County groups have an address listed at UPS stores. The Jefferson County committee’s address is at Mail Boxes, Inc.

On August 29, Puget Sound Energy contributed $50,000 to the Whidbey group, $60,000 to the Skagit “citizens” group, and $40,000 to the group fighting the Jefferson proposition.

The PUD initiatives are the result of a citizen uprising against the pending sale of Puget Sound Energy to foreign investors.

The utility, which serves fast-growing areas in Western Washington, is being
acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, an Australian bank, and several Canadian pension funds.

The utility’s service has long been controversial on Whidbey Island, site of frequent
storm-caused power outages in fall and winter.

Early tactics by Whidbey Consumers for Affordable Energy aren’t likely to win it any new friends. The “astroturf” group has blanketed the island with signs illegally posted on public rights-of-way.

The 2008 campaigns evoke a rich history in the Northwest. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, what was then the Puget Sound Power & Light Co. fought pitched political battles against creation of the Snohomish County PUD and other public utilities.

In Eastern Washington, the Spokane-based Washington Water Power Co. (now Avista) once spent $11 per vote to beat back a PUD referendum in remote Asotin County.

Public vs. private wars have ebbed in recent years.

In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, public utilities’ effort to build five nuclear plants at once — the Washington Public Power Supply System — produced the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Four of the plants were abandoned. Only one was completed.

Puget Sound Energy, and its predecessor Puget Power, have largely supported Republican candidates for state office. A group called the Fair Competition Council long served as private power’s political arm.